Mary Van Cline

Van Cline combines photographic imagery and cast glass. Experimenting with Kodak emulsions, 1977, set her course inventing photosensitive glass processes for the next forty years. Receiving a Japan/US Friendship NEA Fellowship Award, 1986, financed capturing film images of the archipelago islands of Japan. USIA Arts America, 1993, commissioned a large installation for Cincinnati Arts Museum, which then travelled 14 venues in Southeast Asia. Her large transparent glass photograph, reflects narrative imagery of time passing and healing into a giant reflecting glass pool, marking a timeless drama of theatre in the round. Adapting industrial techniques is important to her creative process, whether it’s aerospace industries etching photo imagery into large bronze slabs, or computer lighting systems projecting moving images. Being invited to Dupont Industries, 2007, provided access to experimental processes embedding her photo imagery within their safety glass for a private commission in Tel Aviv. In 2012, expanding realistic castings, she moved to a bronze foundry, learning mold making techniques for life-sized figures of sugar glass, a process she created using time-heat compression in kilns. A pioneer in contemporary studio glass, her journey was recently recorded for the Oral History Program at the National Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Photography has a memory-evoking power, the very process stops time altogether. Her imagery invites the viewer to look for changes in ourselves, crossing the lines of our imagination. To be for awhile in a space where time does not just stand still, it does not exist at all.